"Our state’s physician-assisted suicide law instantly removes
penal-code protections from a vulnerable segment of the population
deemed “terminally ill.” The law allows anyone labeled as terminally ill
to request assisted suicide—but it also accepts heirs and the owners of
caregiving facilities to formally witness such requests, even though
the probate code does not even accept “interested” parties as witnesses
to a will.

The law does not require an attending physician to refer the patient
for psychological assessment. It thus does not allow for screening for
possible coercion, or for underlying mental conditions that could be
behind the suicide request—unless the patient has signs of mental
problems, which may not be visible to a suicide-specialist doctor they
may not even know. In these and other ways, the law devastates
elder-abuse law and mental-health legal protections, and it deprives
those labeled as terminally ill of equal-protection rights that all
other Americans enjoy."

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

"The
answer to the first question is the white-tailed deer. Deer do not set
out to murder people, as far as anyone knows, but they do jump out in
front of vehicles so often that they cause more than a million
collisions a year, resulting in more than 200 deaths.

The answer to the second question, according to a new scientific study, is the cougar.

Laura R. Prugh, a wildlife scientist at the University of Washington; Sophie L. Gilbert, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Idaho; and several colleagues argue in the journal Conservation Letters
that if eastern cougars returned to their historic range, they could
prevent 155 human deaths and 21,400 human injuries, and save $2.3
billion, over the course of 30 years.

And
although cougars do kill humans sometimes, the scientists estimated
that number would be less than one per year, for a total of less than 30
lives lost, far less than the number of lives saved."

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Evidence shows that just in the US to-date, July 16, 2016, at least 649 women have a
Zika infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. There is a bill that has passed both Houses of Congress, has been through conference and House conference report approval, that is now awaiting Senate approval of the conference report to then get to Presidential approval. Approval would lead to funding - but self-centered politics is now getting in the way of reducing harm.

Here is an excerpt from a critical editorial, with a link to the full article:

"A bipartisan $1.1 billion compromise on the White House funding
request passed both the House and Senate overwhelmingly, and the House
recently passed the conference report, which can’t be amended. Only
after the report came to the floor of the Senate did Democrats discover
they couldn’t support the bill, which failed in a 52-44 procedural vote.

Democrats
now claim the measure would have “banned” Planned Parenthood from the
health-care providers list and restricted funding for birth control. In
fact, Planned Parenthood simply isn’t on the specific list of public
health clinics and community health centers that will receive additional and immediate social-services block-grant funding in Zika-hit locales like Puerto Rico."

Are the reasons given for changing their support of the bill and the Zika prevention funding into opposition to this funding bill, to vote against the bill, are these reasons sufficient to justify the increased threat and harm to mothers, children and society?

What is appropriate and skillful action for those with legislative responsibility in the face of the Zika virus threat?